Officials are unsure how to punish Liu Xiangming, because, as one official admitted, “no matter how much he is fined, he won’t be able to afford it”.

Liu’s punishment could come to hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of yuan. But the financial penalty would be meaningless for a man long trapped in poverty.

Liu, 58, makes a living collecting rubbish in the suburbs of Suzhou. He has not returned to his hometown of Pizhou in Jiangsu, about 500km away, for 18 years, the Beijing Times reported the man as saying. Liu’s 10 children – four boys and six girls – were aged between two months and 21 years old. The family had lived quietly until local media recently reported the seventh child, a five-year-old boy, had accidentally drowned in a pond near their home.

[…] The family is the epitome of the city’s marginalised class. With each person able to earn only a meagre income, the parents often have more children. They are often referred to as “guerillas with more children than the government allows”, for their ability to stay under the radar of family-planning officials. [Source]